Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/406

 sent to a boarding-school near London, and remained there until his father removed, with his family, to Lymington in Hampshire. The social life of that little town in 1776 was many years afterwards described by him in his ‘Literary Recollections.’ For four years he was at the grammar school in the adjoining borough of Christchurch, when a great disappointment fell on the youth. A friend had promised him a nomination on the foundation for Winchester College, but when the time arrived for the fulfilment of the promise the nomination was given to another to oblige a patron in the peerage. Warner's dreams of a fellowship at New College and of ordination in the English church were thus dissipated. He returned to Christchurch school, and passed the next seven years of his life in ‘severe and reiterated disappointments.’ His first thought was of the navy, but he went into an attorney's office. On 19 Oct. 1787 he matriculated from St. Mary Hall, Oxford, and kept eight terms at the university, but left without taking a degree.

About 1790 Warner, through the mediation of Warren Hastings, was ordained by William Markham, archbishop of York, his title being the curacy of Wales, near Rotherham, where he stayed for three months. He had been promised by [q. v.] the curacy of his vicarage of Boldre, near Lymington, and for nearly four years he served in that parish. The influence of Gilpin's tastes was afterwards perceptible in the topographical writings of Warner. The more lucrative curacy of Fawley, on the banks of Southampton Water, then tempted him to remove, and he stayed at Fawley for over two years; but the situation did not agree with his family. The chapel of All Saints, Bath, in the parish of Walcot, was opened for divine service on 26 Oct. 1794, and Warner was placed in charge of it as curate to John Sibley, rector of the mother parish. In April 1795 he accepted the curacy of the populous parish of St. James's, Bath, and he continued in that position for about twenty-two years, preaching his farewell sermon on 23 March 1817.

For many years after his settlement at Bath, Warner was the best known man of letters in that city, and he knew all the literary men who frequented it. His volumes of ‘Literary Recollections’ are full of anecdotes about them. His own writings were numerous, and his sermons were ‘models of pulpit eloquence.’ He was, moreover, a man of independent thought and character. Apart from catholic emancipation, he was a rigorous whig. He dedicated his two chief sermons (the ‘fast sermon,’ preached on 25 May 1804, and that on ‘National Blessings,’ published in 1806) in eulogistic terms to Fox, and appended to the latter a severe character of Pitt. With Dr. Parr he lived on terms of close intimacy, and, like Parr, suffered in preferment for his opinions. His religious views were antagonistic to Calvinism, and he was a zealous opponent of the evangelicals. In 1828 he published a tract on ‘Evangelical Preaching: its Character, Errors, and Tendency.’

Warner was appointed on 13 May 1809, by his old schoolfellow and friend Sir [q. v.], to the rectory of Great Chalfield in Wiltshire, which he enjoyed until his death. For a short time in 1817–18 he was vicar of Norton St. Philip with Hinton Charterhouse in Somerset. He was presented on 3 Oct. 1825 to the vicarage of Timberscombe, and on 29 March 1826 to the rectory of Croscombe, both in Somerset, but did not keep them long. In 1827 he was appointed to the rectory of Chelwood, also in Somerset and a few miles from Bristol, and he retained it, with Great Chalfield, for the rest of his life. In the 1826 list of fellows of the Society of Antiquaries his name appears as elected, but he was never admitted. He died on 27 July 1857, when nearly ninety-four years of age, and was buried on 11 Aug. 1857 in the chancel of Chelwood church, a monument being erected to his memory. The widow, Anne [‘Pearson’], died at Widcombe Cottage, Bath, on 23 March 1865, aged 85, and was buried at Chelwood. One daughter, Ellen Rebecca Warner, was buried there on 18 Sept. 1833, and in the following year a schoolhouse was erected to her memory by the parents.

Warner's voluminous writings comprised:  ‘Companion in a Tour round Lymington,’ 1789. When altered and revised it formed the basis of a ‘Handbook to Lymington,’ 1847.  ‘Hampshire extracted from Domesday, with Translation, Preface, Glossary,’ 1789.  ‘Southampton Guide,’ 1790.  ‘Antiquitates Culinariæ: Tracts on Culinary Affairs of the Old English,’ 1791. (1748–1817) [q. v.] prosecuted him for pirating in this work his print of the ‘Peacock Feast,’ and got a verdict for 20l. The print was therefore torn from all the copies then unsold. This action cost Warner 70l. in all. Grose had told him that Carter had given permission for the reproduction.  ‘Attempt to ascertain the Situation of the Ancient Clausentum,’ 1792. He fixed it at Bitterne Farm, two and a half miles from Southampton.  ‘Topographical Remarks on the South-western Parts of 